Seats at the Regal, by Jasper Orrell

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

At two o’clock in 1957 Mavis Pleydell stood in the Regal foyer with a torch tucked into her sleeve. She had worked there since the cinema opened and could tell which stair creaked without looking down. Before the audience arrived she tested every seat in the back row, pressing its cushion with both hands. One that folded badly received a strip of white tape and was not sold. She placed a stack of folded programmes beside the entrance and turned the face of her watch towards her wrist so that it would not catch the light. Once the film began she walked backwards down the aisle, keeping the torch pointed at the carpet. A boy who had lost his ticket found that Mavis remembered both his seat and the name of the friend waiting beside it. She never watched the ending; she was already by the exit, holding the heavy door against the draught.

List five things you learn about Mavis in this extract.